CHAMPIONING CREATIVITY SINCE 2007

Search

James started out as an intern in 2011 and is now one of our two editors. He oversees Printed Pages magazine and content wise has a special interest in graphic design and illustration. He also runs our online shop Company of Parrots and is a regular on our Studio Audience podcast.

When I was 14 music merchandise was pretty much all I thought about. My rucksack was covered in patches emblazoned with band logos, my T-shirts were exclusively black and baggy, showing off my love for Nirvana, Mudvayne, Papa Roach and a whole heap of rap metal bands I’m frankly embarrassed by today, and I’d be up in Camden every weekend adding to my collection of Judas Priest weed grinders that I was never actually going to use. I was Simon Tam’s target audience.

Somewhat lazily I’ve included an image in this post that concisely explains exactly what Moscow Sans is, who’s created it and why – which pretty much negates this whole piece of text. But in truth it was the best example of the typeface in use that I could find, hence its inclusion with the images below. Anyway, rather than repeating the sentiments of this text I’ll just say how excited I am to see Margaret Calvert lending her expertise to this project and reiterate a widely-held view that Henrik Kubel and Scott Williams are some of the finest typographic designers working today. Enjoy!

In the past we’ve spoken about Namsa Leuba’s work only in the context of her fashion shoots for WAD magazine and Comme des Garçons, but these commissions came about because of her personal exploration of Guinean culture in a series called Ya Kala Ben. She’s also explored the traditions of a tribe called the Khoisan, one of the most divergent peoples in the world. As with many of her projects these images seek to subvert traditional perceptions of African culture by experimenting with anachronistic costumes and environments, and as ever they’re incredibly striking.

About seven years ago Village Green produced a series of iconic posters for London’s infamous Fabric nightclub… and then we haven’t checked up on them since. Poor form on our part as they’ve been busy expanding, improving and creating work for bigger and better clients. Currently it seems they’re specialising in architectural branding for commercial property developments, cladding the Alphabeta redevelopment in Finsbury Square, London and The Bonhill Building office spaces on Old Street. Of course they’ve done other stuff too; like the identity and exhibition design for Jean Paul Gaultier’s Barbican show and Nike’s 2013 Hypervenom campaign, but frankly there’s just too much stuff to cover in one article. We’ll be sure to keep closer tabs on these guys in future.

Most of the time you’ll find Michael Bodiam hunched in his studio, carefully manipulating lighting and sets to achieve perfectly balanced, perfectly lit compositions for fashion and editorial clients. He’s great at this, but well aware you can’t spend all your time indoors. So a few times a year he jets off to far-flung corners of the world with his camera to apply everything he knows about photography to sprawling landscapes and foreign cities. In this instance he’s found himself wandering through South America capturing the diversity of rural and urban life to be found there.

In 2008 the fourteenth and final issue of Johnny Ryan’s Angry Youth Comix was published and all of a sudden some of the world’s greatest fart jokes, cock drawings, and narratives set inside vaginas disappeared from publication. The world got a little less crude that day. Realising that people crave this kind of horrible filth, Fantagraphics and Johnny have compiled all 14 stinking, degrading, borderline unpublishable issues into one great big compendium of poop and smut. What more can I say? If you’ve got the brain of a 12-year-old boy, if you love needless swearing, repellant characters, bad puns and diarrhea then Angry Youth Comix may be the last book you’ll ever need to buy.

This won’t be the best-shot, best-edited film you’ve seen all day but it’ll definitely be the most exciting. Volvo (the car manufacturer) have just released a luminous paint that’s invisible during the day and then brightly fluorescent at night as soon as car headlights bounce off it. Spray it on your bike, helmet, clothing – maybe even your face – to make sure you’re lit up like a Christmas tree whenever you set off on nighttime rides.

When I sat down to write this article I was planning to discuss Ardéchoise illustrator Marion Fayolle’s impressive career to date; her numerous books for the likes of Nobrow and Magnani Editions; her editorial work for The New York Times, her textile designs for Cotélac and Kiblind and of course her very own illustration publication Nyctalope which she co-runs with Simon Roussin. And then I remembered she did a brilliant book of saucy drawings, Les Coquins, and decided to focus on that instead.

After Little Miss Sunshine I feel like the world of American pageantry is something I understand implicitly. Young girls travel the country with their drug-addled grandparents, suicidal uncles and mute brothers desperate to prove their worth as dancers, cheerleaders, singers and acrobats. I assumed that Laurel Golio’s series of photographs at Dance Xplosion might dispel these cinematic myths but it seems this is a fiercely competitive world of high drama and emotion. Laurel’s photos show just how much these kids, as well as their parents, are focussed on success, twerking, tapping and tangoing their way to middle American superstardom.

This morning I had a puncture that I couldn’t fix and had to get the train to work, so it feels timely to be writing about Bikestock, a range of vending machines full of cycling essentials that can be found all over New York and Boston. The concept is a simple one; inner tubes, spanners, tyre levers tyres and any number of other little bits and pieces that make your wheels turn smoothly are boshed into a vending machine so you can grab them on the go and, more importantly, at any time of day!

Joost Bos is a recent graduate from the Academie Minerva Groningen in The Netherlands where he’s spent three years studying for his bachelor’s degree. Like many of his Dutch counterparts he’s a dab hand with typography both traditional and experimental and has a plethora of printed pieces in his portfolio. This one, Sequence 1, is an exhibition catalogue for a show of artist books at Joost’s alma mater, which perfectly demonstrates his design sensibilities. Immaculately set type is interspersed with hand-drawn elements and bright colours bring intrigue to an otherwise monochrome publication. Like what you’re seeing? He’s available for freelance work right now!

Good news everyone, you can now get access to the Printed Pages archive online! It’s been ages since we sold out of the last few copies of our first four issues and if we’re honest, we’ve been getting nostalgic for all those lovely articles we published way back in 2013. There was that interview with Sagmeister & Walsh when they’d only just made Jessica a partner, our racy chat with Dian Hanson about her career in pornographic magazines, the time we found out who put a massive crack down the middle of Tate Modern and our sunny visit to Geoff McFetridge’s LA studio.

Sometimes a dead simple idea is all you need to create something really striking. In the case of Studio Lin’s branding of Stampa that simple idea was a rolled up poster. Stampa specialise in limited edition prints produced by some of the best illustrators around – shipped direct to your door. How do they do this? By rolling them up in a poster tube. So what does their logo look like? A pair of rolled-up prints joined at their edges to form an S. Studio Lin also commissioned an entire custom typeface for the brand, but for me it’s that swirling blue S that hits the nail on the head every time. Simple!

FKA twigs has become the poster girl for everything that’s contemporary and cool. Her music is cutting edge, her style is unmatched and her videos always cause a stir. This new one is no different; directed by the artist herself in collaboration with Boots, Glass & Patron features a pregnant Twigs giving birth to a sea of colour in characteristically creepy settings. Cue a seriously heavy bassline, voguing in the woods and a cast of characters part human part cyborg who round things off nicely. If I’m honest the first minute or so almost lost my attention, but the rewards of the second half left me slack-jawed and wide-eyed. Now hold that pose for me…

“Oh for Christ’s sake how many more independent food magazines could there possibly be?” someone is probably asking right now as they look at this article – and to be fair to them, they’d have a point. But fret not, we aren’t here to herald the arrival of another culinary periodical geared towards the aesthetically-minded foodie. This is in fact Issue 8 of the litho-lover’s fanbook, Printing Friends and the food theme is just a one-off.

British photographer Carl Bigmore is living out a childhood obsession with the USA. The Londoner has just rounded off a project called Between Two Mysteries that’s seen him trawling the Pacific Northwest documenting the daily lives of its inhabitants; using personal pop culture references to contextualise the people he meets. “Since settlers followed the perilous Oregon Trail in search of prosperity in the 1800s,” he says, “the American imagination has left its imprint on the landscape. Oregon is forever haunted by the Overlook Hotel in Kubrick’s The Shining and its chilling analysis of the nation’s conflicted soul.”

It’s been an impressive fortnight at Beakus HQ with great animations coming thick and fast from their team of directors. Last week we lapped up their exploration of the origins of the Magna Carta for the British Museum, in which Gergely Wootsch’s drawings were expertly combined with Terry Jones’ distinctive voice.

Frustratingly we’ve just put together a feature on Montreal for the Spring 2015 issue of Printed Pages and if we’d known of Jayme’s existence before yesterday we’d definitely have asked her to show us around. Hers is a diverse range of clients and projects that encompass everything from playful (award-winning) sexual health resources for queer women, to slick, sensual record sleeves for Canadian singer/songwriter Dinah Thorpe. In between there are artist books, posters and exhibition catalogues, all of which demonstrate Jayme’s tailored approach to design; never relying on stylistic tropes or trends of the moment.

German graphic artist Benjamin Dittrich is principally concerned with scale at both a micro and macro level. He preoccupies himself with subjects as large as the cosmos and as minute as molecular structures, zooming in and out in his textural works to reveal vast and complex systems. His retro-futuristic work is breathtakingly complex, utilising painted and printed layers to launch you though time and space. He’s got a new show opening at Spinnerei Archiv Massiv tonight in Leipzig, which if you’re based nearby we’d urge you to get down to. Utterly beautiful stuff!

You don’t really see them in the UK anymore but there was once a time when fag machines populated bars, clubs, railway stations, street corners and children’s swimming pools so that everyone could readily get their hands on a dose of sweet lady nicotine at a moment’s notice. There’s still a few lingering in Switzerland though, so Daniel Peter and Alice Kolb have found a more family-friendly and creative use for them.

Shedding Skin is the third studio album from London’s Obaro Ejimiwe, aka Ghostpoet. For anyone unfamiliar with his output we’d recommend going back and acquainting yourselves with everything he’s done since 2011’s Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam, arguably one of the most exciting albums of British hip hop to emerge in the past decade.

Jeremie Fischer is an extraordinary illustrator hailing from Strasbourg in France. He’s four prolific years out of university and has filled his time since graduation with the slavish production of illustrated books – for himself, for Nowbrow and for Nyctalope.

Tonight sees the launch of a new book by photographer Annie Collinge at Ti Pi Tin bookstore up on Stoke Newington High Street in London. Some of you should get down there, but we appreciate that others of you are perhaps thousands of miles away. So here for your delectation are some spreads from the book and some close-ups of the images within.

I can’t tell you a whole lot about Lithuanian artist Art Belikov other than he’s 24 years old and, er, Lithuanian. And that all his images are fantastical digital creations. But in spite of the lack of background information currently available to me I’d just like to say that his work is extraordinary. He’s a maker of 3D rendered images depicting scenes borrowed from late 90s sci-fi; all “vintage” cell phones and games consoles, cans of mysterious energy drinks and designer bottled water. There’s a 666 in his URL too so you can be sure he’s a cool guy! When we finally track the man down we’ll ask him some questions about what it all means, but for now just drink in the eerie beauty of his digital creations.

Oi graphic designers! What do you get up to in your spare time? Spot of kerning is it? Take the kids down to the font foundry and do a type casting workshop yeah? Well you’re really letting the side down. Nick Vokey’s a graphic designer who’s worked for The New Yorker and MIT Technology Review and in HIS spare time he makes comics about a medical doctor who coaches a local pee-wee football team and has been turned into a bird by a wizard. He’s a foul-mouthed bastard of a bird but incredibly funny indeed. Have a look at Nick’s comics and then reassess the way you use your weekends. You too could be making an hilarious bird-themed odyssey of graphic art. (This also applies to anyone who isn’t a graphic designer).

In the two years since we first featured nomadic designer Gabriela Maskrey she’s taken on a lot of new projects and pushed her skills in all sorts of new directions. Originally she was all about editorial design – which it has to be said, she was great at – but she’s recently branched out into branding for Peruvian luxury food company La Pulperia. Her bold serif rendering of the company name coupled with historic imagery referencing Peru’s gastronomic culture combines to satisfying effect, and the addition of hand-drawn icons is a great touch too. All in all a great first foray away from the world of books and magazines.

You’re 25 years old and Richard Turley calls you up out of the blue and says; “Hey, I’ve just got this sweet job at MTV and I’d like you to come on board as my senior designer, are you interested?” Of course you’re interested! You’d be a fool not to be interested, even if it means leaving your current (also awesome) job as an art director at The New York Times. Sounds nice right? Well this isn’t some fictional story I’ve just concocted in my head, this is the soon-to-be legendary tale of Erik Carter, a Virginia native turned New York City creative powerhouse who’s filling our (music) televisions with choice tidbits of witty animation and humorous asides from the world of the web.

Fleur & Manu’s latest video for everyone’s favourite ex-goth Skrillex is a bit of a repetitive tale. It takes the form of a mulleted dropout failing to get a loan from his bank, and then having to relive the painful experience again and again, Groundhog Day-style until he loses his shit completely and the whole thing descends into a cross-dressing, semi-naked musical. There are some great hairy backs thrown into the mix too. With a synopsis like that how could you resist?

Bad news guys, I’ve got a new game to tell you about that’s going to eat up all your free time and turn you into one of those dopey phone-tapping lunatics that stare at you all bug-eyed when you ask them to “Get the hell out of the WAY!” on the morning commute. I’ve not had this kind of crippling addiction since Monument Valley, but this one’s bitten me hard.

Four years after first discovering Daniel Swan’s website he’s still not bothered to put any work on it. There’s just a 3D-rendered glittery keyring that bears his name and serves as his calling card. He’s a confident man! Still, when you’re producing work as good as Daniel, you can afford to be confident. Last time we had him up on the site he had collaborated with David Rudnick on an incredible desert apocalypse for RL Grime, and this latest offering for Django Django is no less impressive.

It’s not often I get to write about my two great loves in a single article, but sometimes the stars align and I’m covering smoked fish and graphic design all in the space of 300 words. Today I feel blessed! This strange combination of subjects has come together thanks to Swedish agency Kurppa Hosk undertaking a wholesale rebrand for Falkenbergs Lax, a small, family-owned smoked salmon specialist. Charged with turning the small-scale brand into an international major player in the fish industry, Kurrppa Hosk renamed it Korshags, and have came up with a sleek new visual identity to accompany the new name.

As a rule we profile Jorge Primo on the site once a year; first due to posters for a shoe brand, then a carpenter’s identity and last year it was just for his personal work. This time round Jorge has been hard at it making graphics for skateboarding brand Louw. He’s done designs for their decks, exuberant posters and even knocked up a hand-drawn version of their logo. Choice!

Graphic designer Francesco Delrosso has spent the past few years making his way through undergraduate study and out into the big wide world of Fabrica, Benetton’s communications research centre. There he’s honed his skills in research-based design, putting them to use in the creation of all manner of print publications. Since leaving Fabrica he’s settled in Urbino where he’s specialising in communication and editorial design at Isia.

In the three years since we last posted Simon Roussin’s work it appears the French cartoonist has become something of a cinephile. A huge amount of his illustrated output now comes in the form of homages to classics of the medium, including obsessive screen-printed books about the late, great Steve McQueen, Gerard Depardieu’s best bits and some of Clint Eastwood’s most brutal showdowns. Of course it goes without saying that his drawing goes from strength to strength. What’s wonderful about Simon’s film obsession is his ability to balance an addiction to the silver screen and a prolific illustration career, something my mum once told me was impossible.

Braulio’s been a busy boy lately since he took up his full-time post art directing over at Bloomberg Businessweek. You’d think a job at one of the world’s most respected bi-weeklies would keep his time pretty well occupied, but the restless designer still finds plenty of spare hours to horse around with personal projects, sell weird ouija boards online and hand-letter for The New York Times Magazine. We wonder how he ever gets any rest? “I should indeed sleep more,” he says.

I always imagine that rebranding an architectural consultancy must be the dream gig for a design agency. There’s so much to work with in terms of structural materials, geometric forms, textures, type and slick photography. Even so it’s not every day you see an architectural rebrand executed with the kind of flair with which Two Points has created Aamodt/Plumb’s new corporate materials.

We bang on a fair bit about how good documentation of creative work can be almost as important as the work itself. You might have produced the most typographically brilliant piece of print but if you’ve photographed it badly the outcome will inevitably be shit. But what about if you’ve got seven years’ worth of creative work to document; almost a decade of prolific visual communication? Well then you’re in trouble.

If you’re a fan of the explicit ultra violence prevalent Cleon Peterson’s work you already know Draw Down’s latest monograph on the artist is going to be an essential volume for your collection. If you’ve never encountered him or you’re faint of heart then this might not be one for you. Either way there’s a foreword written by Shepard Fairey, an essay discussing Cleon’s place in art history by Christopher and Kathleen Sleboda and of course plenty of Cleon’s magnificent work. It may be graphic in the basest sense with its visceral merging of violence and sex, but we’ve always been fans of these chaotic monochrome orgies and can’t wait to own some in print. Get pre-ordering!

I’m fast falling in love with the work of Parisian illustrator and artist Louis Granet. The student of the Haute Ecole des arts du Rhin produces comics the likes of which I’ve never seen. His drawing style is unique in its use of unnerving perspective, frantic, angular line work and the childlike application of colour – plus his comics feature empty speech bubbles that offer no clue as to the story within each panel. Granted, that sounds like quite a confusing combination, but Louis’ work is full of drama, suspense and, in spite of its nebulous nature, tangible narratives.

When I think of major league sports brands the name Umbro doesn’t come to mind – sorry lads. That’s probably because they’re comparatively small, British and their logo’s not as cool as the Nike swoosh or whatever that adidas thing is (again, sorry). But Umbro’s latest ad is making me think I’ve got them all wrong; that they’re capable of trouncing the major players when it comes to their advertising budget.